16 US OHIO ßOYS M ' RS. MASSIE got off the uptown bus at Fifty-fourth Street, crossed Lexington-dark now, and almost deserted in the dim out-and started west toward P,ark. She had gone about halfway up the block before she realized she was being followed. It was a man; she could tell that by a kind of hard ring the footsteps had, and there seemed to be something purposeful about them, too. When she realized what she might be in for-Laura Mas- sie was just past forty, but she was a good-looking woman still and she had had to fight off attempted pickups be- fore-a sort of helpless, half-disgusted rage took hold of her. Dogs nosing on a scent-that was the figure that always came to her mind when she thought of such episodes. She wasn't frightened, exactly. There was a pale streak of light reaching out from the apartment house just ahead and beyond that the awning at her own apartment house. She could run for it if she had to. What bothered her most was the humiliation: there would be a pale, strange, excited face peering at her, a voice whispering, perhaps a hand clutching at her arm; she would have to be brisk, grim, harsh, even threatening. Though she couldn't have quite told why, it was with something like relief that she saw, when the man finally overtook her, that he was a soldier. A young soldier, too; he had caught up with her just in front of the first apart- ment house and, perhaps with guile, had passed between her and the entrance, so that the light shone on her face and not on his. But even in silhouette there was no mistaking the youthfulness of his profile, and there was something so incongruous about the soft line of his chin and the blunt, boyish nose beneath the stiff-visored military cap that she could hardly keep from smiling. A boy of twenty, she thought; hardly more. He looked at her as he passed, looked away, then looked back. By this time he was a few steps ahead of her, and they were beyond the doorway; the sidewalk around them was dark again. "My! " he said. His voice was high and wiry, and in his excitement it seemed to crack a little. He spoke rapidly. "I sure thought you was someone I knew." "Did you?" Laura said. He hardly gave her a chance to speak. "Mm- hmm," he said. Now that there was no light behind him she could make out his face more clearly; it was curiously Wé W ANDéR triangular, with a sharp, pointed chin, small mouth, and small, wide-set eyes under eyebrows that arched imperti- nently. "Somebody from my home town," he went on. Suddenly he leaned closer. "Sure you don't come from Cin- cinnati?" he demanded. Laura shook her head. She was no longer scared; she just wanted to see what would happen next. "I'm terribly sorry," she said, but she kept her voice crisp and a little distant. The remark seemed to confuse him. "Sorry?" he repeated. "What about?" "Well, I mean-you were following me because you thought I was someone you knew, someone from Cincinnati. And I'm not. So that ends it, doesn't it?" She had stopped to give point to her little speech, and he s_topped too. His eyebrows went up still further as he stared at her. Then suddenly he re- verted to the same quick tone he'd been using before. "Mm-hmm," he said. He took a quick step backward, as if to get a better view of her, then stepped for- ward again. "I mighta known, though. No Buckeye gal'd be as good-looking as you are. What do you New York girls do, anyhow, to make you look so beau- tiful? " It was a "line," then, as Laura had suspected, and it was so innocently obvi- ous that she couldn't restrain herself. She laughed outright. Then she stopped and looked at him more closely. He had a farmerish sort of build, loose and lanky, but he also had something of the cocky, confident air of a city boy. He puzzled her. "Do you really come from Cin- cinnati?" she asked. "Me? From Cincinnati? Listen, you want me to name you the streets? You know Walnut? You know Main Street? You know Gilhert A venue, out toward McMicken? " Laura was shaking her head and watching him amusedly, and he made his little back-and-forth move- ment again, this time so quickly and rhythmically it seemed almost like a dance step. "Don't be like that," he went on. "Look, let's go places, huh?" Laura shook her head again. "Why not, huh?" "No, really," Laura said. "It's so foolish. " "Why's it foolish?" Laura laughed. "Well, I'm just not the type, that's all. I'm an old married woman, I'm afraid. I should think what you'd want is some young thing, some- one lively. You want someone to go dancing with, and so on." "And so on," he said. He stood and looked at her for a moment. "You ain't old," he said. "I'm old enough to know I'd look silly going out with you," Laura said, a little sharply. She pulled her fur clos- er about her neck and looked at him. "What made you come up in this sec- tion of town, anyway?" she asked. He had begun another of his little dance steps, but this time he stopped in the midst of it. "Why shouldn't I?" he demanded. "Well, it's dull. It's-well, it's what I suppose you'd call residential. All just homes, and apartment houses, and so on. And especially if you're looking for a pickup. . . . What you'd want is Times Square, I should think, or the Village. Where the fun is." "Yeah?" he said. For some reason his tone annoyed her. "Yes," said Laura. He was standing q\lite still now, look- ing at her. "Well, I was just wander- ing around," he said slowly. "And I wandered up here. Us Ohio boys, we wander. I didn't know it was such high- class territory." Then he added sudden- ly, "I got plenty of money, if that's h ' . " w at s worrYIng you. "I'm sure you have," Laura told him. " B ' h " ut you can t tempt me t at way. She took a step forward and glanced at him. "You can see me to my door, if you like," she suggested. " y " h O d es . e sal . T AURA knew what was coming an in- L stant before it happened, but the warning came too late to be acted upon; before she could turn or move he had fi ung himself almost literally upon her, and the onslaught was so abrupt and so awkward that at first her knees gave under her; a touch more and the two of them would have gone sprawling on the